Thursday, July 2, 2009

Picture a Day - Day 211

This has not been a good week. It's too fresh on the mind for me to go into it (and for the sake of the family I'm not sure I wish to) but a young life, a life on much the same mile marker as many of us, was cut short yesterday.

It wasn't an accident but a medical condition fought for over a year. She left behind a young son who just turned two and a husband of not quite a year.
We aren't born with an expiration date stamped on our forehead. There is no guaranteed allotment of days and to some extent we all know that. Yet every day we focus on the petty, the pointless, the distractions and ignore the simple and good.

Everything says you have to look a certain way, feel a certain way, buy certain things and be insanely jealous of anyone who has what you don't.

But who knows what could be lurking around that bend in your life. Devoting ones life to getting the perfect house/family/body/bank account comes at the expense of living that life.
We worry so much about what people think of us; who is judging our actions, our appearance, or just our existing. This new world of youtube commenters constantly judging your every breath has put an even more critical eye upon each of us. We live with a deep fear that someone could record something we do, it could become viral on the web and we'll be doomed to a life of derision.
I took each of these pictures while onlookers gawked at me and wondered just what the hell I was doing. I've heard a few whispers in my direction as I traverse my picture a day project and early on it bothered me.

I'd wait til everyone was gone or not looking to snap a picture. But if I'd waited until the entire campus cleared I'd never have taken a picture of rain drops on a spiders web.

Even though it's something you've seen on every inspirational poster I still think these anonymous words hold true today more than ever.

Dance as though no one is watching you,
Love as though you have never been hurt before,
Sing as though no one can hear you,
Live as though heaven is on earth.

Because no one knows just how long you'll be able to even do them.

4 comments:

Chesney said...

Beautifully said, Amen to that!

jennifer said...

***hugs*** What a lovely post.

Linda said...

Great post. Thank you!

The Less Than Domestic Goddess said...

I love this post. I wholeheartedly agree.